From running marathons to running a top travel agency, Allan Wolman could also not get faster enough to Israel in 1967 to volunteer during the Six Day War.
A tribute by David E. Kaplan
It was with such surprise and sadness that we, at Lay of the Land heard the sad news that Allan Wolman, a contributor to our media platform over the years, had passed away on January 20, 2026. In our digital age where we engage less in person, we were unaware that he had been so ill in recent months.
My first thoughts that came to mind was how fit Allan had been having run three times in South Africa’s famed “Comrades”, one of the most grueling marathons in the world as well riding in the “Argus” (Cape Town’s equally famed international annual cycling race) an impressive eight times. All this we gleaned from his bio under his numerous articles.
What also came to mind to us at Lay of the Land was his article on his experiences as a volunteer to Israel in 1967, which we published in June 2022 on the 55th anniversary of the Six Day War. As in October 2023 when Israel was attacked and faced multiple enemies on multiple fronts and its future was uncertain, so too was the situation in June 1967 – uncertain. However, for overseas volunteers like Allan in Johannesburg, there was no “uncertainty” where they needed to be:
“We needed to be in Israel.”
Having signed up as a volunteer at the Zionist Federation in Johannesburg, when war did break out on the 5thJune, Allan relates he felt a sense of disappointment “as one group had already departed for Israel, and I was not part of it. With ears glued to the radio constantly, as well as almost camping at the Zionist Fed, the days ticked by until I received the call to be ready to leave that evening!
The excitement was overwhelming. I called my parents and next my dad arranged $300 – money that he could ill afford at the time – and rushed around to pack and get ready to leave.
Our SAA plane was a Boeing 707 that took about 250 passengers – all full of volunteers! The excitement at the departure hall was so memorable with proud Dad, tearful Mom and all my ‘envious’ friends who clubbed together and gave me $100 – a fortune in those days!”
For most of the group this was their first trip out of South Africa and it was to a country at war. Most people characteristically flee from wars but not these young Jews, mostly students, who put their lives – and for some their loves – on hold, to support the call of “our Jewish state in need.”
Allan recalls the excitement on the last leg of the flight to Israel from Athens on an El Al flight where on route they were joined by an Israeli fighter jet “to escort us in as the war was not yet over.”
MIDNIGHT AT DIZENGOFF
Allan’s first impression disembarking at then Lod Airport was of “a bunch of bearded rowdy looking soldiers looking fearsome. After the necessary arrival requirements, our group was bussed to a senior citizen’s home in Herzliya – by that time it was already dark, enhanced by the enforced blackout. I remember those first few hours so vividly – the residents of the home were clapping and cheering us. After an almost 24-hour flight and the excitement of landing in Israel, some of our group walked down to experience a swim in the Mediterranean and then – even with the war and the “blackout” – we hitched that evening a ride into Tel Aviv. Sometime before midnight, we arrived at Dizengoff Street –the only place we had heard of – when the cease-fire came into effect and the lights were turned on and the euphoria was simply indescribable. After six days of anxiety, the nation breathed a sigh of relief.”
With what Israel has been experiencing over the past two years since October 7 – of its reservists abroad returning home to fight and its civilians volunteering – it was interesting to ‘travel’ back to 1967 and see how the Jewish youth in the Diaspora responded to the unfolding crisis. Allan writes how the morning after their arrival, they were assigned to kibbutzim across the country “to assist with agricultural work as most of the men were still in the army.” Allan was assigned to kibbutz Kvutzat Schiller (Gan Shlomo) near Rehovot in central Israel and it felt “like landing on another planet.” Following orientation, “I was billeted in a room with three other young guys from England, two of which remained lifelong friends.” Of the fellow South Africans in his group, he writes of Raymond (“Rafi”) Lowenberg who remained in Israel, married, but was tragically killed on the first day of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. “I have hardly ever missed a memorial day in honour of Raymond – a brilliant guy; had his matric before he had a driver’s license and a degree at age nineteen.”
Allan records touring around Israel with his new friends most notably towards the Suez Canal not too long after the war ended “and witnessed the endless lines of destroyed Egyptian army trucks and tanks. We hiked through Gaza, and Gaza City was a dingy backward town with no building higher than two stories. Also hiked to El Arish, again a pretty backward little town. We never made it to the Canal but pretty close as it was a military security zone. Hiking back to Israel proper, Peter, Raymond, Alan and I were given a ride by an Arab Taxi who on route back, decided to turn off the road into an Arab refugee camp, which was a pretty hostile areas for Jews to venture in. Anxious and afraid of what lay ahead for us, we discussed in broken Afrikaans to knock the driver unconscious and take over his car to avoid the danger we feared lay ahead. Such bravado came to nought as the taxi stopped outside a house where his wife and children came out to collect fruit and vegetables he was delivering to his family. We felt ashamed for suspecting the worst.”
Again, what is reminiscent of the current war in so far as Israelis uniting for the return of all the hostages held in Gaza, and civilians across the country volunteering in their support for the soldiers, Allan’s recollections capture a similar mood in 1967 of national unity and support:
“What struck me was the coming together of everyone in support of each other. There was such unity. This was so visibly evident when traveling around the country and seeing at every town or settlement, refreshment tables set out by the women of the area preparing sandwiches and refreshments for the soldiers who were either leaving or joining their units as the army remained on full alert.”
Allan’s writing captures the elated atmosphere in Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War, describing that period:
“…as one of the most profound and memorable experiences of my life. Firstly, this was my very first trip overseas and, in a country, celebrating (with much relief) one of the most astounding military victories in modern warfare, the mood was one of exuberance and happiness after the anxiety leading up to the war. Most of the time was spent working various jobs on the Kibbutz from working in the chicken sheds shoveling chicken ‘shit’ to working in the various orchards and apple packing plant and weeding the cotton fields. You knew you had ‘made it’ – I am talking here serious ‘upward mobility’ – when you were trusted to drive a tractor. This was a status symbol; a far cry from the chicken coup!”
He records the “amazing” evenings as:
“a living metaphor of the sixties. We sat around our rooms drinking coffee and socializing with the girls; Raymond would be playing his guitar and we would listen mesmerised to the music and lyrics of the latest Beetles classic – “Sergeant Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band”. For sure, we were anything but ‘lonely’; we all felt part of something great happening, so much bigger than ourselves.”
Allan concludes with “all good things must come to an end” and one morning “I came to the realization that if I didn’t get off the Kibbutz, I would remain there for the rest of my life,” so he packed his bags and said his goodbyes and left to spend a few weeks with his cousin Cyril Swiel in Tel Aviv. It proved “a real learning experience seeing the other side of life in Israel. I met up with some friends from South Africa and decided to travel through Europe and see the world.”
That zest to “see the world” would lead Allan towards the tourist industry where following his return to South Africa he would go on to run one of the oldest travel agencies in Johannesburg, Rosebank Travel and co-found the XL Travel Group. However, “seeing the world” could never quite match his “being in Israel” in 1967, an impact that sowed the seed for eventually, decades later in 2019, making Aliyah – settling in the Jewish state.
We will miss Allan’s writing, notably his exposure of hypocrisy. This was evident in his Lay of the Land article WHEN DOES LACK OF FOOD MORPH INTO LACK OF TRUTH, that took to task the global media that was“hellbent on shaming Israel in the midst of an existential war,” while “ignoringthe mega-million starving across the world.” He wrote, “If you didn’t know better, you’d think Gaza was the only place on earth where children go hungry. Just switch on CNN, Sky, or BBC – every night another solemn anchor, another indignant UN official, another weepy “expert” telling us what a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Gaza. And yes, it is tragic. But if starvation is now characterised as the world’s ‘No. 1’ war crime, what about all the other famines the media doesn’t bother to cover?”
Exposing selective news coverage similar with what is happening today in the global media by ignoring the fate of the protestors in Iran, Allan wrote that when it came to Gaza, “suddenly every camera lens, every crocodile tear, and every moral sermon is locked in. The media’s appetite for images of starving children seems oddly selective – especially when it’s Israel in their crosshairs. We hear next to nothing about starvation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Somalia in the Horn of Africa,” or in his native South Africa “a country run by a government that shouts ‘a better life for all!’ while literally letting its children starve to death.”
Lives only matter “when it suits the script” wrote Allan.
Allan pulled no punches in telling it the way it is
We will miss that as we will miss him.
We, at Lay of the Land, extend our deepest condolences to wife Jocelyn, their three sons and their families.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
